Friday, January 3, 2014

Kierkegaard: Faith

Søren Kierkegaard 1813 - 1855

I’m stuck on something and it’s probably going to take me a
while to digest it. I’m passing it along
to you for your input if you are so inclined.
It’s only a snippet of something very involved and I suspect it will
lead to a broader inquiry.

I was reading from Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and I came across this one very challenging
sentence. I haven’t yet deciphered it
and I can’t let it rest.

“Faith is precisely the paradox
that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the
universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior – yet is
such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being
subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the
universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is
superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an
absolute relation to the absolute.”

I would like to pick at elements of this sentence in an
attempt to find its meaning but first let me add the writing’s next two
sentences in order to give it some meaningful context.

“This position cannot be
mediated, for all mediation takes place only by virtue of the universal; it is
and remains for all eternity a paradox, impervious to thought. And yet faith is this paradox, or else (and I
ask the reader to bear these consequences in
mente [in mind] even though it would be too prolix* for me to write them all
down) or else faith has never existed simply because it has always existed, or
else Abraham is lost.”

*prolix – long and wordy; unnecessary, tedious length

Are we picking apart the concept of faith as though it were
an exquisite watch – always knowing, possibly, that to understand it we will be
required to reassemble it accurately enough to have the watch once again run
flawlessly? I think yes – this is our
challenge. Let me provide some preceding
sentences as clues to solving the problem sentence.

“The ethical as such is the
universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which from another angle
means that it applies at all times. It
rests immanent* in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its TÉYOÇ [end,
purpose] but is itself the [purpose] for everything outside itself, and when
the ethical has absorbed this into itself, it goes not further. “

I suspect that when Kierkegaard speaks of ethical he is somehow referring to
something more than being morally correct in human conduct yet I can’t find a
definition in any dictionary that goes beyond the sense of being virtuous. My Webster’s
Third New International Dictionary weighs about as much as my left leg and
it doesn’t give any more complete a definition.
Kierkegaard was Danish and there is always the question of translating a
concept from one language into another. There
are so many judgment calls having to do with shades of meaning.

I offer you now another piece of evidence in our detective
story.

“The single individual,
sensately* and psychically qualified in immediacy, is the individual who has
his [purpose, end] in the universal, and it is his ethical task continually to
express himself in this, to annul his singularity in order to become the
universal. As soon as the single individual
asserts himself in his singularity before the universal, he sins, and only by
acknowledging this can he be reconciled again with the universal. Every time the single individual, after
having entered the universal, feels an impulse to assert himself as the single
individual, he is in a spiritual trial [Anfægtelse], from which he can work
himself only by repentantly surrendering as the single individual in the
universal.”

*sensate – to feel or apprehend through a sense or the
senses

This leads me to wonder what Kierkegaard means when he
refers to the universal.Are we
talking about a concept of Oneness? Let’s
hold that thought and continue with Kierkegaard’s immediately following text.

“If this is the highest that can
be said of man and his existence, then the ethical is of the same nature as a
person’s eternal salvation, which is his [purpose, end] forevermore and at all
times, since it would be a contradiction for this to be capable of being
surrendered (that is, teleologically* suspended ), because as soon as this is
suspended it is relinquished, whereas that which is suspended is not
relinquished but is preserved in the higher, which is its [purpose, end].”

How can I equate the ethical with a person’s eternal
salvation? Kierkegaard was a Christian
and, possibly, a very early existential thinker. Wouldn’t his concept of personal salvation
have something more to it than following the Golden Rule? I have to think that his use of ethical does not accurately and fully translate
into English. I am currently befuddled
by the contradiction illustrated in his final thought here. I think he is pointing out the absurdity of a
conclusion being drawn. Does the idea
alone lead to this absurdity or does the limitations of language contribute to
this seeming contradiction? Like it or
not, mathematics is cleanly defined and precise while words are fuzzy. Unfortunately not all thoughts can be
expressed as numbers. What is the
equation for beauty, as a ‘for
instance’?

Bear with me. I must
travel a bit further.

“If this is the case, then Hegel
is right in “The Good and Conscience,” where he qualifies man only as the
individual and considers this qualification as a “moral form of evil”, which
must be annulled [ophævet] in the
teleology of the moral in such a way that the single individual who remains in
that stage either sins or is immersed in spiritual trial. But Hegel is wrong in speaking about faith;
he is wrong in not protesting loudly and clearly against Abraham’s enjoying
honor and glory as a father of faith when he ought to be sent back to a lower
court and shown up as a murderer.

Faith is namely this paradox
that the single individual is higher than the universal – yet, please note, in
such a way that the movement repeats itself, so that after having been in the
universal he as the individual isolates himself as higher than the
universal. If this is not faith, then
Abraham is lost, then faith has never existed in the world precisely because it
has always existed. For if the ethical –
that is, social morality – is the highest and if there is in a person no residual
incommensurability* in some way such that this incommensurability is not evil
(i.e., the single individual, who is to be expressed in the universal), then no
categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had or what can be
deduced from them by consistent thought.”

*incommensurable – lacking a common basis of comparison in
respect to a quality

I am left questioning what Kierkegaard’s means by faith.
I am not yet seeing the basis of his conclusions about the nature of
faith in this paragraph. And this leads
us to our initial sentence:

“Faith is precisely the paradox
that the single individual… “

As you can see it is the initial sentence I used to
introduce Kierkegaard’s train of thought.
There is a lot to absorb here. It
would be useful to me to move beyond the linear presentation of these ideas and
attempt to isolate the main ideas and then identify their subordinate concepts
and arguments much as I would in creating an outline. The organization may help me in visualizing
Kierkegaard’s presentation. I have one
last quotation to leave you with because I believe Kierkegaard’s concept of
social morality finds its way into Sartre’s existential views. I think this quote from Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions may be
relevant in our understanding Kierkegaard further.

“From the Christian standpoint,
we are charged with denying the reality and seriousness of human undertakings,
since, if we reject God’s commandments and the eternal verities, there no
longer remains anything but pure caprice, with everyone permitted to do as he
pleases and incapable, from his own point of view, of condemning the points of
view and acts of others.

I shall try today to answer
these different charges. Many people are
going to be surprised at what is said here about humanism. We shall try to see in what sense it is to be
understood. In any case, what can be
said from the very beginning is that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which
makes human life possible and, in addition, declares that every truth and every
action implies a human setting and a human subjectivity.”